8 Rock Around The World 1 April 1978
1
the LAN kill m
Mark Mothersbaugh
by Rusti Shudders
John Waldo Fee Waybill
While Hollywood girds for the Academy Awards, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack plays on "unnominated" in the streets of the world, as Dylan's first film slips out of spring in L.A. for the road. Whether Dylan's arty home movie amounts to anything more, Renaldo and Clara remains 'to be seen.' But where? According to L.A.'s big daily newspaper criticasters–armed with Dylan's own "for a special bunch of people" disclaimer–the film is definitely not for everyone. In the Herald Examiner's slam, "Much Ado About Nothing," the reviewer worked up a big spit comparing Dylan to one low-crawling, segmented invertebrate and one fur-bearing carnivore, foaming Dylan "doesn't just debunk the myth of Dylan, he assassinates it. He seems heart-set on exposing himself as a worm. He succeeds." More from the Examiner about Dylan coming across as "weasel-eyed and wan" and "the emperor isn't wearing clothes," and we dissolve to the Santa Monica Evening Outlook's admittedly confused critic who was "not at all sure" he knew what the film was all about. "It doesn't worry me, though," wrote this reviewer, "because Bob Dylan doesn't know what it means either and it doesn't worry him." The only local critic who really liked what he saw is the L.A. Times' pop-rock weatherman, Bob Hilburn, who emblazoned: "It's a bold, if flawed work that has the independence and some of the vision of Dylan's music. Dylan fans will want to see Renaldo and Clara again and again to piece together this often dazzling puzzle. Whatever it's problems, Renaldo and Clara is alive in a way that separates it from much of the passing Hollywood parade. That's why it should have an especially long life on the art and college film circuits." Art and college film curcuits? From Dylan's own backyard backlot to university back- roads? Less than a month after it opened in Westwood, the college town-movie capitol, Renaldo and Clara left the happy student hunting grounds, left L.A. completely, promising to return to a smaller theatre. Dylan, who
records again here in April, may have to reconsider Columbia's couple-million dollar offer for the soundtrack if the film is to avoid near-total culthood. Columbia, meanwhile, has been circulating a specially-pressed Rolling Thunder Live EP "for radio only": Side 1: "People Get Ready," "Never Let Me Go." Side 2: "Isis," "It Ain't Me Babe." if, as Hilburn says, the four-hour film is "to be best enjoyed by those who are so far into Dylan that they not only have most of his Columbia LPs but several of his bottlegs as well," then Dylan fans will be scrambling from record company to radio station trying to pick off one of the 5,000 promo EPs.
NEWSDRINK: Next climber from the folks who brought you Elvis Costello: Nick Lowe. He's produced Costello, Graham Parker, Dr. Feelgood and the Damned and gathered his own "pure pop" singles into an English LP, Jesus of Cool. Now Columbia's got him and is trying to change the title of the LP so Lowe doesn't kill himself off with radio before he even begins the climb. The Clash, English wave faves, missed having their first album released completely when Columbia said it did not measure "up to the company's technical standards," let alone creative standards. By the way, pre-Columbian Costello and Lowe are featured on Stiff/Arista's Stiffs Live LP with once-upon-a-tour mates Ian Dury, Larry Wallis and Wreckless Eric. Dury's new LP, New Boots and Panties! featuring "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll," is yet another album held up in the title department with radio play jitters. L.A. nut-rockers, Devo, has signed with Warners in the States. Devo's stock soared considerably when the Sex Pistols' signing campaigns came to town, elevating Devo into
national pop prominence. However, Devo is a simply amusing new wave group with no resemble to punk whatsoever. Not only is Devo's intimidation factor zero, but they are playful robots ("Are we not men?") whose whirr and whimsy is wild party fun with laughing flashes of futuristic folly .. . Allen Toussaint and the "New Orleans Musical Mafia" are producing Joe Cocker's first album for Elektra/Asylum ... Can the Ice Age be far behind if punk is melting in the tropics? Brian Eno is producing Talking Heads '78 at Compass Point Studio in Nassau, Bahamas, and Cream producersupergrouper Felix Pappalardi is producing the Dead Boys in Miami ... Isn't Ex-Mama Papa John Phillips the only other artist signed to Rolling Stone Records beside the ol' punkers themselves? ... Beatle soundalike, Badfinger, has reformed Ex-Mott the Hoople Ian Hunter has produced Mr. Big's (singer-guitarist Dicken) album, Sepuku Suicide. ... Queen's producer Roy Thomas Baker is handling Cars, a five-man rock group from Boston, whose "Just What I Needed" is a big request item there .
American International Pictures, the B-movie kings (Easy Rider), have formed the AIR Label to handle expansion into soundtracks, Epic Records will distribute The Buddy Holly Story album for openers. AIR hopes to develop artists off of soundtracks ... Are stage and movie scripts being hotly developed from the Eagles' Desperado and Hotel California LPs?
The soundtrack from Irving Azoff's FM movie will be a chartbuster. It'll feature new material by Steely Dan, Joe Walsh and Jimmy Buffet, along with familiar hits by the Eagles, Steve Miller, Bob Seger and Linda Ronstadt . Will producer Robert Stigwood wind up shooting Evita, the stage
play by Jesus Christ Superstar writers Rice & Webber? ... Cashbox Magazine reports: "Pop recording talent is getting harder to sign." David Bowie begins his first U.S. tour in two years on March 29 at the San Diego Sports Arena with April, 3,4 and 6 dates at the Forum. Bowie's recently wrapped up a starring role in Berlin-based movie, Just A Gigolo. He'll be joined on the tour by a six-piece band, including '76 holdovers bass George Murray, drummer Dennis Davis and guitarist Stacy Haydon, joined by Simon House (from Hawkwind) on electric violin, Shaun Mayes (from Humble) on keyboards and Roger Powell (from Utopia) on synthesizer. There will be no new album prior to the tour ... Word is Bruce Springsteen will tour nationally be-hand his early-April-at-the-latest release. Bruce's "Fire" is on Robert Gordon's new Fresh Fish Special platter, and that's Springsteen joining Lou Reed on the title track of Street Hassle ... Jet Lag is the rock and roll movie musical planned around Elton John and Rod Stewart .. Dylan is paying his Rolling Thunder sidemen in Japan $300 a week.
THE INPHALLIBLE FEE: The gang of coordinated rogues known as the Tubes dynamited the elderly underpinnings of Hollywood & Vine's Pantages Theatre to raise the curtain on their new double album, What Do You Want From Live. Opening night of the five-day sold-out stand was a seamless gem of package-perfect music and news, and proved the Tubes are not only rock's top outrage but doomed to succeed inspite of themselves. Fee Waybill, the Great Waldo Pepper of Tubes Television (they pipe in their own closed-circuit TV), is a charismatic conqueror of all he purveys. Although the Tubes could stand on their musical merits alone, despite accusations of lagging commerciality, Waybill weighed in with lightning rod in one hand and his own rod in the other (and I don't mean Rod Stewart). Fronting what must be the largest rock circus playing for peanuts, Waybill executes his role as ringmaster with the dexterity of a seasoned Nureyev and the bombast of a brazen terrorist. Fee doesn't bother to steal the show; he prefers ruin he can walk away from. Trying to find change for a phone call after "Don't Touch Me There" and "What Do You Want From Life" was fellow Bay aerialist Timothy Leary with Sgt. Pepper adapter Henry Edwards, who's writing a film around Leary's early years. Leary shook his head, "I didn't realize they were so complex, that they could do so many things ..." L.A. is proving to be a major boosting ground for still another flight of San Francisco rock creativity--Hagar, Money, and now the ready, aim, fire Tubes–the most complete rock extravaganza on its way to the top to buzz L.A. in years?!
Next month: BIG JAM AT SPEEDWAY. A tale of new cities built upon the stage trampled by Aerosmith, Foreigner, Heart, Dave Mason, Ted Nugent, Rubicon, Bob Welch, Santana and a pop population of 375,000! The performers tell it like it was at the Ontario Motor Speedway's "California Jam II," forty minutes of highway from L.A.
Fee Waybill by Lauren Hoffman
Mark Mothersbaugh by Judi Lesta


